By Sarah Kloss (IV)
This past winter, many students were disappointed to hear that the Student Activities Committee’s (SAC) annual Holiday Assembly was cancelled. The assembly is a beloved (and entertaining) Pingry tradition, and many were surprised and confused as to why it would not be running. This resulted in a number of rumors and speculations about the cause for cancellation, but, according to Upper School Director Dean Chatterji, the real reason was the timing of the assembly. During the month of December, the school was dealing with a bout of poor decisions made online, which had impacted other members of the Pingry community. Dean Chatterji said, “Our highest concern is that the people in the community know that they are cared about, and during that time, people did not feel comfortable or cared about. We as a community could not be making fun of each other. We did not want people to be targets of public humor.”
Therefore, on the night before it was to take place, the assembly was cancelled. This upset many students, including the leaders of SAC. According to Dean Chatterji, the content of the assembly had no impact on the cancellation, and SAC was ready to present their hard work to the school. Ola Weber (VI), a leader of SAC, explained that she didn’t think it was handled in the best way, as she was told the night before the assembly. By that time, they had pulled several all nighters to be fully prepared with a finished master script. She believes that the school could have been more proactive in alerting the student leaders well before then. When asked about what the future of SAC looks like, Weber responded with “It’s concerning, we have to be really careful with our future content. We are not going to be able to make any jokes because we are afraid it will hurt people’s feelings. But the point of SAC is to make people laugh.”
In regards to the holiday assembly, the content will be scrapped because it was mostly holiday focused. Even so, the club is pushing onwards and beginning to prepare for their next performance, which will be the spring assembly. Hopefully, SAC will remain an important part of the Pingry community because of the joy and humor it brings to the student body.